LMS Review: Cornerstone OnDemand

All vendors and former vendors know Cornerstone OnDemand. Winning 100+ deals a quarter, they make every competing vendor shake and quake. They have feet on the street everywhere. They have solutions for every industry, every language, every company size and every business problem. Actually, vendors, you all should just go home and stop playing. Cornerstone, you win.

I joke…but only a little.

For all of you non-vendors, Cornerstone OnDemand is a leading global provider of a comprehensive learning and talent management solution delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The talent management solution consists of recruiting, learning, performance, social, compensation and succession modules. Cornerstone currently empowers over 14 million users across 191 countries and in 41 languages.

They are one of the only talent providers, if not the only, that has never taken their eye off the extended enterprise LMS market.

Having lost so many times to Cornerstone over the years, I thought it was only fair that I spend double the time on this review, find some holes and restore some modicum of competition to the industry. What I found, was a great extended enterprise LMS and company I remembered competing against.

Cornerstone supports extended enterprise initiatives with deep social, certification, reporting, ecommerce, globalization and audience management features. It’s easy to deploy, use and maintain. They are the first company we reviewed that provide solutions for all five types of extended enterprise including corporate, association, ecommerce, academic and public sector solutions. There is a lot of resources, case studies and videos cataloged below on their extended enterprise successes.

In terms of gaps, probably the biggest I noted is that they don’t have gamification functionality which is a really wanted extended enterprise feature set. The mobile applications also needs to be built out to equal other systems I’ve reviewed.

My Assessment — They have earned the right to be included in just about any extended enterprise or talent management opportunity anywhere in the world. My biggest concern with Cornerstone would be just getting lost in the crowd with so many new customers.

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As always, at Talented Learning, we’re not about making sweeping predictions or judging vendors. Instead, we document the realities of today’s LMS landscape, and how learning technology is actually adding value. We have only one goal — to help clients find appropriate LMS vendors based on their unique business requirements.

John Leh is CEO and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning, LLC. Named one of the Top 20 Global Elearning Movers and Shakers of 2017, John is a fiercely independent LMS selection consultant and blogger who helps organizations develop and implement technology strategies – primarily for the extended enterprise. John's advice is based on 20 years of industry experience, having served as a trusted LMS selection and sales adviser to more than 100 learning organizations with a total technology spend of more than $65 million. He helps organizations define their business case, identify requirements, short-list vendors, write and manage RFPs and negotiate a great deal. You can connect with John on Twitter at @JohnLeh or on LinkedIn.

11 Comments on LMS Review: Cornerstone OnDemand

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The company I work for has just completed an implementation of Cornerstone that took 6 months rather than the 1 month Cornerstone promoted as one of the reasons to purchase this solution. Indeed, none of the promises they made during the sales cycle have born out to be true. It is clunky, manual, has tax calculation issues, the navigation is terrible. It is terribly buggy and a highly immature product. I started reaching out to my contacts in the business that purchased the solution. I have not received any positive feedback at all. In fact, one company is suing Cornerstone currently because of their inability to deliver on their promises. The Cornerstone sales people are terrific at selling but the product simply fails to deliver.

Hi Melinda.
We are in the process of evaluating learning management systems one of which is CSOD. We have been entertaining the idea of signing on with CSOD based on their system demos and recommendations from Gartner. However, this is the second time within a week that I am hearing negative comments about CSOD’s support during and post implementation.
I am very interested in hearing more and would like the opportunity to speak with those willing to discuss this further. Unfortunately, I am new to this site and don’t know to provide my contact information without having to post it publically.

Hi,
Do you know who that customer is that is suing CSOD? Also Melinda, would you be willing to chat with me for 5 minutes? I am evaluating CSOD and ofcourse they set me up with all positive references so far. I am so glad I found this!

I’m currently trying to customise the design of a Cornerstone implementation for a client. From that point of view the system is terribly dated and clunky. There’s no provision for responsive layouts, which is a major oversight. I feel like I’m back in 1998.

My former employer migrated to Cornerstone four years ago. I liken their product to being a customer of a cable company: once you are up and running, as long as nothing breaks or you don’t need to change anything, the LMS itself is pretty good. However, if you need service, RUN AWAY. From our front-line client rep to our salesperson, CSOD staff either gave us the runaround or were totally unresponsive. There were times I literally could not get anyone to answer a question. Time and again, we were steered to the global support center (marginally helpful) or to the online knowledge base or user groups. Reps also kept “office hours,” which were a joke – log into a conference call and stand in line hoping to get your turn to ask a question before office hours ended. The most abysmal customer service I have ever encountered. It’s a shame, as their product was generally good, with a nice, customizable interface and solid reporting capabilities. I called it the “DIY LMS.” If we had not had a team member who was a pretty good self-taught IT geek, we would have been dead in the water. On balance, NOT recommended.